Wednesday, 21 July 2004 | The ER

There is a two-and-a-half-foot-tall Jesus that hangs on the wall of the ER waiting room. He's three-dimensional, with his hands outstretched and peeled forward, so that it's unclear whether he's being crucified or whether he's leaning out for a hug.

The room's sole window is to the right of Jesus and covers the entire wall. At street level, we're able to watch the people scurry around behind the glass as if they're in an aquarium, coming and going to places undoubtedly better than the one we're in. I watch a double-decker tour bus pass by, thinking that if the tourists really want to see New York, they should visit this place.

...

My headache had persisted for 73 hours by the end of work on Tuesday. I decided it might be time to visit some sort of medical professional, who could confirm that I wasn't at risk for something sinister like brain damage; at 5:30, my only option appeared to be the emergency room. I chose the hospital by its proximity to work, rather than for its familiarity. Apparently I'm on the ER tour of this city, as it's the fourth one I've seen in less than a year.

...

The seats were metal mesh and had armrests for your discomfort. There was a loudspeaker—everything was amplified for me, of course—that called out last names and occasionally reminded you that patients were seen in order of ailment severity, rather than by time of arrival.

It was crowded. Sitting behind me was a tall boy wearing a basketball uniform who let his mouth hang open as if on a tired hinge. He moaned loudly every few seconds, sounds that were distinctly brain-related, rather than due to whatever pain he might've been in.

A guy hopped by on one good leg, a woman near me complained of heart attack-like symptoms, and a man came in whose bones seemed to be improperly arranged, as one appeared to be jutting out of his back. A girl sobbed in the lobby, her face hidden by the arms of a boy, and a woman with no teeth and a protruding lower jaw gummed silently at the security guard.

Across from me was a mannish woman who wore a bright yellow t-shirt tucked into her jeans and gleaming white sneakers. Her glasses were thick and tinted, and her hair was short and combed away from her face. I noticed her immediately because of the obnoxious hand-held game she was playing. The volume of the little machine was impressive, and reminded me a lot of a car alarm.

Due to the nature of my ailment, it was hard to be in the same room with her, but impossible not to be, if I hoped to hear my name called. I quietly asked a nurse on duty whether she had any earplugs, explaining that my head was extra-sensitive due to a possible concussion. Within minutes, a security guard was telling Yellow she needed to stop playing her game because it was bothering someone in the room.

Uh-oh. Yellow didn't like being told that. She stopped playing her game, and instead started complaining to the entire room, for the benefit of whomever it was that "didn't have the balls to tell her to her face." "My horoscope said somebody was gonna tee me off today!" she bleated.

I sat on the other side of the room and exchanged glances with Martin, who was there to keep me company, doing his time in the ER as as I had done mine. Although the offending noise had stopped, I felt like I'd traded a bad thing for something just as rotten. I'm never thrilled to be the source of conflict, even though no one else knew it was me.

"You could be that guy," Martin offered optimistically, pointing toward the hallway at a handcuffed man being led by police past the waiting room. He had bare feet, a once-white bandage wrapped around his head, and tributaries of blood dried on his face. Later I heard him literally beating down a door to one of the private rooms. At least I think it was him.

...

By 7:30, Ken Jennings had won another round of Jeopardy on the TV hanging in the corner of the room. During Wheel of Fortune, I was seen by the nurse: blood pressure, temperature, generic questions. "At least you've gotten this far," she told me, before sending me back into the waiting room.

During Extreme Makeover, I got my paperwork squared away with a funny man named Reggie, who had two bottom teeth, a shaved brown head, and white sideburns shaped like triangles. I liked him right away. "Have you been to our country club before?" he asked, grinning, through bullet-proof glass.

At some point I was sent into another waiting room, which wasn't a room at all, but a row of chairs within the emergency "chamber." It was not an improvement. Not only was it a tease (I'd assumed that I was put there because I was about to be seen), but it was cold, there was no distracting TV, my company was forced to wait outside, and I was sitting next to a door that was perpetually being slammed. For a while I covered my ears in anticipation of the door hitting the frame, but eventually I gave up.

...

"Are you Whiteman?" I nodded and gathered my things. "No, don't get up. I just wanted to point you out." I sat there, deflated, wondering what that was about. A few other people in scrubs would show me a hint of attention before disappearing down the hall. It was almost midnight before I was actually seen.

More people wheeled in on gurneys; some conscious, some not. A man who said he was knocked over by a large branch; his female friend nodding and saying all she remembers is seeing a lot of leaves. A Japanese businessman with his suit pant leg rolled up, exposing bloody skin. A twenty-something girl in a wheelchair who was audibly breathing directly from a small metal tank. Charles.

Charles looked something like a biker, with his long brown hair, black t-shirt, and chunky jewelry. Like Yellow, he wore thick, tinted glasses, and his pony tail poked out of a black visor that had "New York City" written across the brim. He walked around in his gray underwear and sheer white socks, wearing the pink robe he'd been given like a jacket. The hospital staff treated him dismissively, like he was a regular, and like he was crazy.

...

The person who examined me literally shrugged at my case. I didn't have enough symptoms to be in serious danger (no nausea, no passing out, etc.), but she agreed that my headache had some odd features, namely that it was still persisting. She stabbed in the dark. Caffeine? Cholesterol, perhaps? "Maybe it's because I hit my head," I offered, with hidden sarcasm. After spending about three minutes with me, she gave me and my empty stomach two Percocet and told me to sit there until it kicked in.

I was in a small room with three doctors wandering in and out, and one or two other patients being treated. While I was waiting for the drug to crawl from my stomach into the rest of my body, I listened to the radio, and to the doctors chat.

Charles was the only other patient consistently in the room with me, but he was waiting for a psychiatrist, rather than a high. He wasn't satisfied with the attention he was getting from the staff, so he raised his arms in the air and slid down his chair onto the floor, yelling and farting the whole way down. The staff more or less ignored him.

He put his hands in his underwear and raked around, before pulling his underwear down, exposing himself, and them yanking them back up again. He found some packaged disposable medical equipment and tried to steal it, fruitlessly searching his pink gown for a pocket to put it in. He tried to peek behind the curtain to watch the doctor examine another patient, which awarded him some negative attention from the doctor. Finally he was carted down the hall.

I was given a prescription for Tylenol 3 on top of the Percocet in my system and was sent on my way. By the time I got home, I had trouble even standing. My headache was gone, sort of, but it was replaced with heavy ocean brain and nausea. Around 3 a.m. my Percocet—my whole evening in the emergency room, in fact—was regurgitated into the toilet.

This morning I woke up with the same undying headache.